Bryophytes from Saiwa Swamp National Park, Kenya

57 species of bryophytes belonging to 30 families are reported from Saiwa Swamp National Park, of which 57 species are new for Saiwa Swamp National Park and 10 records are new for Kenya, indicated by * and ** respectively. Although small in surface area (15.5 sq.km.) the park represents an undercollected area in Kenya with a good diversity of bryophytes

PRNG Random Numbers on GPU

Limited numerical precision of nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX and other GPUs requires careful implementation of PRNGs. The Park-Miller PRNG is programmed using G80’s native Value4f floating point in RapidMind C++. Speed up is more than 40. Code is available via ftp ftp://cs.ucl.ac.uk/genetic/gp-code/random-numbers/gpu park-miller.tar.g

Evan S. Tyler Papers, 1877-1919

Fargo real estate agent responsible for the Park Board acquiring Oak Grove Park and the establishment of Island Park

The COVID-19 Pandemic and Japan’s Anxiety-Suppression Society: Anxiety, Self-Restraint, and Solidarity in a Disaster Community

In this article, I analyze the Japanese government’s response and public discourse during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic, a period covering the onset of the pandemic, the declaration of a state of emergency, and the decline in the second wave of infections by mid-October 2020. Assessing that the virus was highly contagious but not particularly fatal, the Japanese government adopted a policy focusing on the prevention of large-scale clusters of infections and treatment of severe cases, calling for the public to practice of “self-restraint” in avoiding the “three C’s” of closed spaces, concentrations of people, and close contact. The goal of this measure was to minimize the pandemic’s socioeconomic impact and sustain the health care system. It was successful in terms of infection and fatality rates. Particularly after the state of emergency was lifted on April 7, Japan began to garner global attention as a model for containing the pandemic without coercion. Behind Prime Minister Abe’s resignation, however, lay the “failure” of Japan’s COVID-19 response. The Japanese people lost faith in the government’s response owing to its perceived harm to publicness, as symbolized in the “Abe-no-mask” incident. Japanese society is a “disaster community,” sharing in the anxiety over the experiences and memories of disasters occurring over the past twenty-five years, including the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995 and Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. Japan has thus experienced COVID-19 as a part of a greater, more complex chain of disasters. The response to COVID-19 in the form of the request for self-restraint was also rooted in such communal solidarity. Controversy over PCR testing policies or “optimistic” government perceptions pertaining to COVID-19 evince the present state of the disaster-nation that is Japan as it endeavors to suppress anxiety and maintain daily life as usual. I conceptualize Japanese society in this situation as an “anxiety-suppression society.

Records of \u3ci\u3eDufourea Maura\u3c/i\u3e (Hymenoptera: Halictidae) From Isle Royale National Park, Michigan

Dufourea maura is recorded from Isle Royale National Park, Michigan. This is the first report of this western North American species east of the Great Plains states

CHILDREN¡¯S HEALTH GRADIENT IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: EVIDENCE FROM INDONESIA

Using data of children under age fifteen in Indonesia, I examine how the health gradient among children evolves over age. It is found that health status is strongly correlated with household income among children younger than seven, but not so among the older school-aged children. I find evidence that schooling explains partly the pattern, as schooling has a positive impact on health status of children of low-income families, but little impact on health status of children of high-income families. Accessibility to healthcare providers is found to play a significant role in shaping the gradient, but it does not explain directly the observed evolving pattern of the gradient.Child Health Gradient, Healthcare, Schooling, Developing Country

Front Park\u27s Past and Future

Front Park is a 26-acre urban park in Buffalo, New York. The park entrance is located on Porter Avenue. The park is bounded on the west by interstate 190, on the north by the Peace Bridge truck plaza and on the north by Busti Avenue and the adjacent Columbus Park-Prospect Hill neighborhood. Front Park is part of Buffalo’s Olmsted park system. The park system takes its name from its most prominent original designer, Frederick Law Olmsted Sr., a nationally renowned landscape architect who along with his partner, Calvert Vaux, designed parks and park systems across the country, including New York City’s Central Park. Olmsted’s work in New York City garnered the attention of prominent Buffalonians, who hired him to design a park system in 1868. Buffalo’s Olmsted park system was designed over a nearly 50-year period, from 1869 to 1915

Connecting the dots: Why does what and who came before us matter?

A "Coloring Outside the Lines" editorial column.  A review of organizations who pioneered the involvement of persons of color in park stewardship, outdoor recreation, historic preservation, and other forms of place-based conservation.

Pulmonary Disease Caused by Mycobacterium xenopi: The First Case in Korea

Mycobacterium xenopi is a nontuberculous mycobacterium (NTM) that rarely causes pulmonary disease in Asia. Here we describe the first case of M. xenopi pulmonary disease in Korea. A 66-year-old man was admitted to our hospital with a 2-month history of productive cough and hemoptysis. His past medical history included pulmonary tuberculosis 44 years earlier, leading to a right upper lobectomy. Chest X-ray upon admission revealed cavitary consolidation involving the entire right lung. Numerous acid-fast bacilli were seen in his initial sputum, and M. xenopi was subsequently identified in more than five sputum cultures, using molecular methods. Despite treatment with clarithromycin, rifampicin, ethambutol, and streptomycin, the infiltrative shadow revealed on chest X-ray increased in size. The patient's condition worsened, and a right completion pneumonectomy was performed. The patient consequently died of respiratory failure on postoperative day 47, secondary to the development of a late bronchopleural fistula. This case serves as a reminder to clinicians that the incidence of NTM infection is increasing in Korea and that unusual NTM are capable of causing disease in non-immunocompromised patients

American Image of President Park Chung-hee of the Republic of Korea: Park Chung-heeas Death and American Newspapers

South Korea s President Park Chung-hee was still a controversial figure in Korean history He was a man who achieved the economic miracle of South Korea while adopting repressive measures to suspend the democracy and human Korea The nostalgia of Park s era also remains Park receives fairly good evaluations from the world American newspapers at the death of Park Chung-hee provided the objective views on Park Chung-hee Throughout the newspapers editorials Park was the man who brought the economic miracle of South Korea and a good ally for the U S at the time of Cold War On the other hand he was another dictator who enjoyed autocratic rule under the U S protection The American views provide the foundation to evaluate Park Chung-hee of toda